Web site maintenance, website management and web consulting services

For the foreseeable future, we’re going to be looking at online marketing strategy (which is a fancy term for website planning) here at thinkdave.com.

When I started this blog last year, my first article was a little ditty called “Website Planning 101“. While the title of the post may be somewhat inspiring, the article itself was a boatload of rubbish. Why? I didn’t know what I was talking about.

I’ve worked with some great micro business owners in the past year, and they’ve really helped me to understand what a website needs to be in order to make money for it’s owner. I’ve known how to build websites for years but I’ve only recently learned what it takes to make them work.

So I’m going to re-visit Website planning/strategy/marketing or whatever you want to call it, in depth, so you can all understand what’s so very wrong with the way you’re marketing your business online (unless of course you’re doing everything right, in which case you can take the rest of the year off).

Because marketing is a somewhat complex subject (I know this because it took me 6 years to finish a 4 year marketing program at college) I’m going to break phase 1 of the series, which I cleverly refer to as ‘Strategy’, into the following posts, to be added every couple of days:

1. The Internet is no place for an identity crisis.
2. Website? Check. Target market? Umm…
3. Me me me. What’s in it for me?
4. I am website. Hear me roar.
5. Either you’re with us, or you’re against us. You choose.
6. Nostradamus’ guide to website management.
7. If you build it there’s a 1 in a billion chance they may come. But they probably won’t.

Once you’ve knocked together an online marketing plan worth reading, which really isn’t hard, we’ll move into phase 2 where we’ll start working on the content, functionality and super-cool features our website needs to get people to whip out their credit cards.

And finally in phase 3, just to really shoot myself in the foot, I’ll teach you how to build your website from scratch (well, sort of from scratch) without having to hire a web designer.

At the end of this series, which could end up taking 3 millennia for me to finish writing, you’ll have a micro business website that people actually consider worthy of visiting. It might even make you some money.

Because I’ve already written all the posts in phase 1 of this series, I know how good they are. You won’t know unless you subscribe. Go ahead, you know you want to.

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Today marks the 1st Anniversary of the thinkdave.com blog. Exactly one year ago I posted my first article “Website planning 101″ (more on that on Wednesday).

I’m pleased to report that while I’ve only managed to write 80 measly articles in the past year, I have learned 2 valuable lessons.

Blogging lesson 1 - Write the way you speak

One of the main reasons I haven’t written more articles is because I was boring myself. I’m not an academic. I’m a guy who helps small businesses achieve more online. I deal with people like me, people who speak like me, and I don’t mince my words.

So when I discovered (just last week) that writing the way I speak allows me to post articles faster and with more emotion, it made me a very happy camper indeed.

Blogging lesson 2 - Blogs are not the Holy Grail, they’re better

Like most new bloggers I fully expected my blog to attract thousands of new clients quickly. It didn’t. In fact I still get most of my new clients using a mix of client referrals and Google Adwords.

So why bother with the blog?

Because my blog does one very important thing: it builds trust. I’ve had countless emails from people responding to my Adwords ads saying things like “I’ve been looking for a website maintenance guy/web manager and I think you’re exactly the type of person who can help me grow my business”.

These people have responded to an impersonal advert and found a real-life person on the other end of the line. And we all know it’s easier to do business with someone you trust. Try it.

What can we expect from thinkdave.com in the next 365 days?

Good question. The answer: lots. Lots more marketing advice, lots more tutorials and a bunch of new resources to help you build your own little Internet Kingdom. You’ll have to subscribe to find out the details though. Classes start on Wednesday.

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“It’s very hard to correlate any particular action with a particular increase or decrease in search engine rank. Often when a rank drops, it’s because of something that Google has done, not anything you’ve done.” - Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, 3rd Edition by Peter Kent.

Book meme:

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

via leahculver.com

I know it’s sad that I’m reading SEO for Dummies, but someone bought it for me as a gift. And I’ve actually learnt a few things from it. In fact, if you’re a micro business website owner, you may want to read it too.

And I know the meme says to post the text of the 5th sentence, but the 6th sentence was a good one so I had to use it.

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